There's a new poll out from Gallup and USA Today which one is headlining as showing there's "no mandate for criminal prosecutions" and the other is headlining as showing that "most want an enquiry" into whether Bush's anti-terror policies broke the law. Those headlines aren't mutually incompatible. ...

April 2008: BBC's Newsnight interviews US Judge Advocate Diane Beaver about the Bush administration's legallese cover-story for war crimes. I truly loathe the notion of torturers and those who ordered torture getting away with it. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee...

Graphic via Caribdude at The Agonist. As I wrote over the weekend, progressives who really hoped the Obama administration would roll back the Bush years' secrecy over illegal renditions and torture were waiting with intense interest to see what would happen in a key court case today. Five men were s...

The Pentagon is still focussed on 24-36 months (or more) despite what Obama or Maliki might say. Iraqi prime minister Nouri "Napoleon" al-Maliki says he expects the US to withdraw from Iraq faster than promised, and he's just fine with that. President Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to remove a...

American presidents and their staff work for the American people, they are not monarchs with an inner court of priviliged nobles. President Obama has reminded all his predecessors of that simple fact, living up to a campaign promise to "nullify attempts to make the timely release of presidentia...

I wrote on Wednesday about the Pentagon's claim that 61 Gitmo detainees had "returned to terror" and noted previous Seton Hall Law studies that said the Pentagon was...umm...lying through it's teeth. Seton Hall now has a new report out examining the evolving claims and hyped allegations entitle...

Download | Play    Download | Play Thanks to Heather for the vid clip One of the key parts of Israel's well-planned media narrative in Gaza is that they are carefully targeting attacks and that there is no humanitarian crisis there which isn't attributable to the mis-management of the...

The Surge in Iraq essentially became a plan to bribe militants with guns and barrowloads of cash to not attack US troops and that left the core corruption, graft and incompetencies of the Iraqi government untouched and thus left the seeds of future conflict while temporarily tamping down violence to...

Download | Play    Download | Play When is a withdrawal not a withdrawal? Apparently, when it's conducted by the Obama administration's "bipartisan" hangovers. This Sunday,Joe Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that a NY Times report alleging U.S. military commanders argued at Bid...

Ray McGovern: If Obama gets this wrong, Afghanistan will be his Vietnam. At a meeting in Paris on Sunday, top-level representatives of Afghanistan, its neighbours and world powers met to agree to put the country to rights. "There can be no long-term security and peace in the region without a stable,...